The kings of no sense thinking - it's written in the constitution.

I work with French people every day and I try to be diplomatic, but often the French do your job for you and today a French man declared to me, “We are the kings of no sense thinking!” And so they are. The traffic lights for pedestrians turn green to red and back again and the lights which control road traffic work in the same way, timed so that red lights for traffic coincide with green lights for pedestrians and vice versa. This we all know, but the French apply their own bent logic, so that pedestrians and cars both cross on red as often as they do on green. Somehow the wrongness of one counterbalances the wrong of the other. Of course, sooner or later someone gets bounced off their feet by a bike, a motor cycle or a car, but as another Frenchman told me “We know we are breaking the rules, so it is ok for us when we get caught.” A French friend told me a story about how, when he was in Switzerland, he started to cross the road against the red light, but a Swiss woman caught his sleeve and sharply berated him for his irresponsibility, in demonstrating such a bad example to her child. “I’m sorry," he retorted "but I am French.” There is certainly a French idea that the liberté of their constitution can be called upon to justify jay walking, cycling without helmets, smoking in enclosed areas of bars and so on. If you drive a car, you know there will be pedestrians crossing at all times, so you keep an extra eye open. If you are a pedestrian, you don’t trust the green light to be safe, so always look to your left as you cross. Somehow in this fraternité of shared no sense thinking the égalité finds its own balance. Voila! Long live the king!